I hope you aren't American, because then the talk of "our morals" is a bit rich when discussing imprisoning people for bad reasons. Or complaining about a seat for the Saudis that the US got for them while they fund their war crimes in Yemen.
Do you mean because I asked if they were American? That was to clarify who they meant by "our". If they meant "Norwegian morals" then the statement is much different than if they meant "American morals".
It is nationalistic to conflate an individual's morality with actions of the state. Especially in the context of a post by said individual condemning actions of their state. That makes your response also disingenuous.
Not to mention that your response is a classic example of the tu quoque fallacy [1].
I'm not conflating anyone's morality with actions of their state. I'm challenging the assumption of moral high ground that underlies the premise of the argument.
As in: "Country X has these strong morals but isn't following them" and I reply "Country X doesn't have those strong morals".
Please, please believe me that when I tell you what I'm trying to say, that I'm being truthful.
I believe you, I just think you're misreading, or reading too much into, the GP's statement.
Morals are statements, not actions. The actions of China that GP is opposed to are clearly against (stated) western morals – hence all the outrage in the comments on this article, and in the GP's own comment. You are right that the US state habitually violates those morals. That doesn't change what the morals are, that just makes the state (and individuals who support the state's actions) hypocritical. To rephrase your summary:
GP: "Country X has these strong morals but isn't following them." Your reply: "Country X hasn't followed those morals for a long time."
Which are statements that are not incompatible with one another.
To put it another way – I'm a US citizen. I share morality with many/most in my community. To support China's human rights abuses violates our (my community's) morals. (So does detaining individuals at Guantanamo Bay.) But my/our state is too blinded by greed/capitalism to do anything about these travesties (and has been for a long time, as you point out). That doesn't mean that my community has no morals. It just means our state is hypocritical, and my community is not sufficiently empowered to change that (possibly because of other communities which are hypocritical, or because of longstanding power structures).
I'm considering the morals of the state here rather than individuals and either way I disagree that morals are statements, rather than actions. I would term that "stated morals" or "claimed morals", to me actions are what count when trying to determine any actors actual morals.
China, for example, has excellent claimed morals. As does the USA. The voting record and what prompts public outcry from American citizens has shown what stated morals they actually care about, for the Chinese citizens ... well we all wish they had the opportunity to make those same types of statements freely so we could see how they compare.
So it's a subtle difference in ethical philosophy value judgements (totally fair point to disagree on) and a bit of talking past each other regarding who "we" refers to.
As to the "which morals" issue, in this context the imprisoned or killed are/were surely more concerned with morality in practice.
Agreed. But certainly, I wish the US would call out China's abuses in the Human Rights Council, and equally (or more) I wish for China to call out the US's abuses. If we (moral US citizens) can't effect morality of the (immoral) US state, perhaps the (moral) Chinese citizens can do so through the (immoral) Chinese state, and vice-versa.
